Tonya Schevitz has the details about that "special" group admitted to Berkeley in 2002 with rock-bottom SAT scores, and she believes Berkeley was simply using this tactic as an end-run around the ban on racial preferences in admissions:
UC Berkeley officials developed the policy, which considers grades and SAT scores but includes other factors, such as socioeconomic status, after voters approved Proposition 209 in 1996 to ban affirmative action in admissions.
But the analysis of the data shows that of the 422 among the bottom tier of admitted students, 378 were minorities. Seventeen were of unknown race and 27 were white...
Data for the class admitted in 2001 show SAT I scores as low as 610 (out of a 1600 scale), made by a Latino student with a 3.50 grade point average. Although most students who scored poorly on the SAT I exam had good GPAs, such as an African American student with an 810 SAT score and a 4.09 GPA, there were some with low academics to match the low test scores.
Of the 422 students, 73 -- or 17.3 percent -- of the admitted students had GPAs below 3.50...
"It is outrageous. They don't have any business going to Berkeley," said [Chair of the UC Board of Regents John] Moores, who did his own preliminary study of 2002 admissions data recently without looking at race. He was intrigued by the 2001 data and said it appears the students were admitted for "all the wrong reasons."
UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl countered Moores' report in a letter to Dynes, saying Berkeley is adhering to regents' policy in admissions. It is unfair to focus just on SAT I scores because a host of factors determines an applicant's admission score, Berdahl said. On average, he said, an applicant's GPA and test scores correlate very highly with the admission score...
He said that Berkeley actually admitted 98 percent of California resident applicants with SAT I scores above 1400 who did not apply to one of those three majors [in the College of Engineering] and whose GPAs were not below average for the Berkeley admit pool.
"Most importantly, first-year performance data for these (low-scoring) students indicates they are doing well at Berkeley: not one has left due to academic deficiency," Berdahl said in his letter.
"This is under the blah, blah, blah, category," Moores said of the university's response to his report. "I think something is very screwy, so I want somebody to come back and tell me exactly what is going on."
Posted by kswygert at October 13, 2003 02:54 PM